Vincent van Gogh: Becoming Vincent (Part 2)

Stories of Art - HENI Talks

This episode explores Vincent van Gogh's transformative period in Paris from 1886 to 1888, focusing on his evolving artistic style and personal development. The

Key takeaways

• Van Gogh's self-portrait from 1888 reveals a man at a psychological crossroads—haunted yet intensely aware of his own artistic evolution.
• The technical precision in the colors on his palette directly corresponds to those used in the painting, indicating deliberate and thoughtful composition.

Main topics

• Van Gogh's self-portrait from 1888
• Artistic transformation during the Paris years

Notable quotes

"I don't know, to me it seems somehow haunted, sombre, maybe possessed." – Alistair Souk on Van Gogh's self-portrait.

Conclusion

Van Gogh's time in Paris marked a pivotal shift from his early, somber depictions of rural life to a vibrant, expressive

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Hello and welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alistair Souk. And I'm James Fox. A pink grey face with green eyes, ash coloured hair, wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth, stiffly wooden, a very red beard, quite unkempt and sad, but the lips are full. Now for once, James... Those aren't my words. They are the words of Vincent van Gogh describing a really famous self-portrait from 1888, probably the last picture he painted in Paris at the end of a two-year spell in the French capital that we're going to chat about today. And in it, he is wearing a blue linen smock. It's enlivened with these dabs of orange. And he's standing at work before this plain grey-white background in front of an easel, which we can only really see the back of, rather tantalisingly. And he's holding his palette and his brushes. in one hand. And last time we started with Van Gogh's traumatic self-portrait with bandaged ear, which he painted about a year after this one. And in this self-portrait, his ear, that sort of, I don't know, miniature red-tinged whirlpool of flesh, those are my words, is very much visible and still attached. His expression, I don't know, to me it seems somehow haunted, sombre, maybe possessed. And I can tell you that writing about this picture, this self-portrait a few months later, Van Gogh, he even described his appearance in it as the face of death. I'd love to know what you make of this astonishing, quite, well, I think unsettling likeness. Well, the eyes are so dark, aren't they? I mean, they're bottomless, these dark eyes. Speaker 2 (1:39) So I don't know whether that's revealing. The other thing that's extremely revealing about this painting is... If you compare it to what we had in the previous episode, the potato eaters, it is so different in style. So true. Above all, in the colour. I mean, he's actually, he's almost brandishing this palette and showing it off to us. And look at the bright colours on there, these bright oranges and greens and reds and yellows. And it's an indication of where Vincent is heading as an artist. Can I Speaker 1 (2:04) tell you just a wonderful detail about those colours on the palette? Some people have analysed the picture. Oh, right. And I think what they found through technical analysis is that... all of the colours on the palette, they correspond directly to the colours used to make the painting, if you see what I mean. It's also the other element to this picture, we talked about the Speaker 2 (2:22) bright colours, it's also a very different kind of brushwork to the brushwork he was producing. a couple of years earlier. That brushwork before that we saw in the potato eaters, it's slodgy and slappy and potato-y. Whereas here, he's got the dots and the dashes that he would have probably seen in modern French painting in the 1880s. Definitely, Speaker 1 (2:41) definitely. Speaker 2 (2:42) It's a transformation. So Alistair, this portrait, we Speaker 1 (2:44) can see it signed on the canvas, was made in 1888 when Vincent was living in Paris. Can you give our listeners a sense of... where we've got to so far in this series. Well, let's see if I can remember what we spoke about in the last episode. So he's born, when is it, 1853, I think. Actually, as you pointed out a year earlier, another Vincent was still born in this family. He's born to, his father's a reverend, a clergyman, a Protestant. And he grows up in rural Netherlands. He's part of a big family. He has a very close-knit family and quite a sort of Christian moral upbringing. He loves the natural world. He goes to school. He doesn't thrive at school. But quite quickly, there's another Vincent in the story, an Uncle Scent, who is an art dealer in The Hague, I think, isn't it? And he gets Vincent a job at a big... essentially international art dealership. And eventually, Vincent, who spends many years being an art dealer, surprisingly, given that we think of him as this outsider, he ends up, and I love this so much, in London, living in Brixton. Totally incongruous. He then has a little bit of time where he's back and forth between branches of the dealership in London and Paris. He gets sacked. He has blazing rows with his dad. It's a story really of dead ends, false starts. He ends up trying to be a lay preacher in the coal mining district of the Borinage in Belgium, where he's living in a hut, gives away his clothes and encounters... real poverty in this place. But it's a disaster because he's not very good at public speaking and he can't get people on side. And I think we ended last time with he makes the decision, encouraged by his art dealer brother Theo, who bankrolls his life and is fundamental to the story of Vincent van Gogh, to become an artist. And he returns, not to their great pleasure, to the family home in a different village in the part of the Netherlands, which is where he starts painting peasant scenes. And we ended with his first big and last big multi-figure composition, The Potato Eaters, which was what? 1885. Yes. So in this episode, Speaker 2 (5:00) we're going to continue that story and to see how, in some ways, Vincent finds his voice, how he becomes the artist we know and Speaker 1 (5:07) love. So this is episode two in our mini-series about Vincent van Gogh. Speaker 2 (5:22) Alistair, now we're into episode two. Shall we have a brief discussion of Vincent, of who he was, what kind of person he was? Speaker 1 (5:29) Well, I think we absolutely should. And that portrait that I just described, and indeed Vincent described at the start, I think here he actually looks quite tense, as I say, quite haunted, quite possessed. And we'll come on to why that might be the case. But it's at the end of this spell in Paris, this important transformative spell in Paris. Quite soon after this, his brother, who was a big hero of the first episode and is indeed a hero of Vincent's life, his brother Theo, he ends up marrying someone, a woman called Jo, Jo van Gogh-Bonga. And when she meets Vincent... in 1890, she actually encounters someone who, it's quite a surprising picture, if you like. She recalled meeting this person who was robust, broad-shouldered, he had a healthy complexion, cheerful expression, something very determined in his appearance, is what she wrote. And she said that he appeared much more healthy than Theo. But she said this self-portrait... Of all the 35-odd self-portraits that Vincent produced, was the one that most resembled him? And even though he doesn't have, as you say, those green eyes we see elsewhere, there's the red beard, he is ginger-coloured in terms of his hair, and... What do we know about him? We know that he was, I mean, my sense is that he was always quite an unsettling person, probably for people to encounter. Possibly quite an annoying and at times argumentative, difficult character. You wouldn't want to do a podcast with Vincent, would you? Well, partly you'd be distracted by, I suppose he had a sort of facial tick. And I think, I mean, I don't... think I've got that going on, but it would be quite distracting. And he could be quite, there's always that thing, he could be quite unsociable, but yet he does become friends quite, has these close friendships with certain artists. So maybe that offsets that idea. Could be quite intense. And I think in his description of this self-portrait, he talks about appearing wild and unkempt. And that was his manner. He often dressed not in kind of, you know, smart bourgeois attire, which I think could be quite embarrassing. particularly in this Paris moment, which we'll get to with Theo, but in these kind of workman's clothes. Speaker 2 (7:31) I think Vincent is so well known and yet so misunderstood. I think he's probably the most misunderstood artist in the history of art because when most people think of Vincent, what are the words they might use? They might say innocent, childlike, a loner. an outsider, a savant, a madman. None of those things really are true. Vincent was middle class. Yes. He was very intelligent. He was very widely read. He spoke, I think, four or five languages very well. He knew a great deal about the history of art, a great deal about modern art. He was very well connected to the art world in Paris at this time. He wasn't really a loner. In fact, his life's quest was a search for connection and for friendship and for love. He was very meticulous and deliberate in his art, although his art seems to be very quickly impulsively made. He thought very carefully about what he was doing. But he was also a very difficult person, as you mentioned. He was socially very awkward. He was stubborn. He was belligerent. He had a terrible temper. He drove people away. He fell out with almost everyone. So, you know, he's a complex character. He is complex. I think there is a saving grace as well, though, that Speaker 1 (8:44) he is highly, clearly, as you say, intelligent, but highly self-aware. And you often find that in many of the letters. And I can't remember if you did, if there's a particular letter that he writes at 29, when he's 29 years old. You may have quoted it in the first part. I can't remember. But he says... don't imagine that I think myself perfect or that I believe it isn't my fault that many people find me a disagreeable character. And he admits, you know, he's terribly cantankerously melancholic, irritable, yearning for sympathy. I become indifferent, sharp, sometimes even pour oil on the flames if I don't get sympathy. I don't enjoy company and dealing with people, talking to them is often painful and difficult for me. But do you know where a great deal, if not all of this comes from? Simply... from nervousness, Speaker 2 (9:29) because Speaker 1 (9:29) he says, I'm terribly sensitive. And I think that sensitivity surely is also the secret of his genius as an artist. An Speaker 2 (9:38) astonishing self-awareness, as you say in that letter. Speaker 1 (9:40) Yeah. We are jumping ahead a little bit, James. He hasn't got to Paris yet in our story, so we should probably pause and return to the narrative itself. Speaker 2 (9:49) Yes, let's return to 1885 when he's still living in the Netherlands in the family home. Shortly after he finishes that... painting the potato eaters, which neither of us like. He very quickly has to leave for two reasons. First of all, his family kick him out of the family house because he's been so destructive in the family house. And his father's dead by this point, isn't Speaker 1 (10:12) he? Speaker 2 (10:12) His father has died. Yeah. So, and many of the family think that Vincent... really brought upon that death by being such a terrible presence in the household. So he has to leave the family home. There are also rumours, we mentioned this in the previous episode, swirling about his relationship with one of the peasant girls, if you like, who is shown in the Potato Eaters. So Vincent has to leave. Speaker 1 (10:34) And Speaker 2 (10:34) the first thing he does in October 1885 is he goes very briefly to Amsterdam, where he sees the newly... opened or reopened Rijksmuseum. He must have loved that. He loved it. Spent three days there looking at Rembrandt, looking at Vermeer. Speaker 1 (10:47) Loved it. It's so interesting that because he really, you know, we always think of him as a modern artist and a great rupture with the past. Speaker 2 (10:53) But Speaker 1 (10:54) he really admired, he writes about so many Dutch masters in the letters. And it's quite fascinating sometimes, we might come on to this later, but to think about echoes maybe of... golden age Dutch art in his work. Speaker 2 (11:07) Really important. And we'll try and tease that out later on. So he spends a few days there. And then in November 1885, he crosses the border to Antwerp. It's there that he discovers the work of Rubens, who is the great artist of Antwerp, loves Rubens. But what he decides to do in Antwerp is to enrol at this very prestigious art academy in Antwerp. He thinks, I'm going to really sort of consolidate my gains. I can't imagine that he would be a model student in that kind of environment. go so badly. Can I read a little quote from one of the other students? This is what this other student says of Vincent. He came rushing in like a bull in a china shop and spread his roll of studies out all over the floor. Everyone crowded around the newly arrived. who gave more of an impression of an itinerant oilcloth dealer and rolling and unfolding at a flea market is marked down samples of easily foldable tablecloths. Ouch. The majority of the young chaps laughed their heads off. Soon, the news that a wild man had surfaced spread like wildfire throughout the building and people looked on Vincent, this is my favourite bit, as if he were a rare specimen from the Human Wonders Collection in Speaker 1 (12:15) a travelling circus. Whoa, I hadn't come across that. That's incredible. I mean, it's interesting because that's like the myth-making is happening. in real time as he's arriving in Antwerp, before he's even become the wild modern artist, the madman of myth today. I know. Speaker 2 (12:29) I mean, we smile and we laugh, but, you know, it's actually, it's so sad. Because really, you know, wherever Vincent goes, from his childhood, from those first days at primary school, all the way through to his death. 30 years later, he's misunderstood. He's shunned. He's ridiculed. He's bullied. He's harassed. And of course, you know, we talked about his character. He doesn't help himself. He's a very difficult person. So when he's at the academy, when a teacher in life drawing class goes up to him and says, no, do it this way, not that way, he Speaker 1 (12:58) bursts into a Speaker 2 (12:58) rage and shouts. Which I Speaker 1 (12:59) get because he's really frustrated by the idea of strictures of technique. Yeah. You know, he's all about personal expression and a sense of spontaneity. working directly from the motif. And what he's doing there is the antithesis. It's everything that, in a sense, modern art rejects. And I can see why... Having not known that quote, it's put a different line, which I've come across, where quite soon afterwards, where he's reacting to his experiences at the academy. And maybe actually he's quite defensive. But, you know, you can sort of see that sense of him rubbing people up the wrong way. He's writing to Theo and he's saying that actually at this place, all of the drawings I see there are hopelessly bad and fundamentally wrong. And I know that mine are totally different. time will just have to tell who's right. Speaker 2 (13:52) Well, he is determined to prove himself right, determined to prove everyone wrong. You know what he does? In February 1886, this is a month after arriving at the Academy, he decides to prove everyone wrong by submitting a drawing to the annual